Marketing iPhone apps

The iPhone revolution is on and you may have created the next Angry Birds! However, apart from submitting your app in Apple’s App Store, you may be wondering what else is needed to successfully market your app.

If you wish to make money from your iPhone app then you must have a clear marketing plan from the very beginning. You need to prepare a marketing plan that will create customer loyalty.

The competition in the market is so severe that in order to succeed you must promote your iPhone app, endlessly. You must implement numerous strategies to achieve results. You need to get attention of news media. After news media features your iPhone app, other media will automatically jump on the bandwagon.

Marketing iPhone apps is similar to marketing any other online product, although the marketing tools have increased tremendously in the recent past, especially social media. You should develop a product that customers need, deliver a strong marketing message to attract customers, and continue to develop new products and updates to retain existing customers.

Here are few ways businesses can improve their customer-base using mobile apps.

1. Build a great product

If your app idea solves any problem faced by people in real life, well & good. If not, marketing could get you some sales, but it is not worth the effort. So, first you must invest time and money to create a great product and then everything will follow.

2. App store optimization

Search is a popular method people use to discover apps. App store optimization is all about optimizing your app title, description, and keywords to improve the search ranking of your apps in the app store. Do searches inside the App store to see how your app ranks for important search terms.

3. Importance of launch

Since so much of your app’s success depends on a successful launch you need to plan it thoroughly. If possible, get all the app reviews to be published on the date of launch. Then your app will make a bigger impact and more review sites will write reviews.

4. Get reviews on Blogs & Websites

Send personalised Emails to iPhone review sites & blogs. Ask them to write reviews of your app. Think about it in terms of how you can be of help to the blogger or webmaster. Guest posts are a great option. However, never pay money to get a review.

5. Get positive reviews in App store

Ask your friends to write reviews of your app in the app Store. It takes some time for an app to get some good reviews. If you can get people to write your first 5-10 reviews, that can give you a good start.

6. Communicate

You need to create a marketing video for your app, even before starting the development of your iPhone apps. Tell your app idea to your friends. If they cannot relate with it in less than a minute then you have work to do. You should improve on your app idea, until it is clearly understood, or go for a new app idea.

7. Get a good app icon

When marketing an iPhone app you must have an attractive app icon. The app icon will help you sell your app & it should properly represent your app. Remember, best designed icons can sell more apps.

8. Use promo codes

Once your application is live on the store you can give away promo codes to app reviewers. Apple allows you to generate up to 50 promo codes per version of your app. You can then give away these promo codes to be redeemed in app store for a free download of your app.

9. Use Affiliate links

Whenever you link to the App Store from your website or within your app you can use an affiliate link. Apple has an affiliate program that pays 5% of all purchases from a user.

10. Use Analytics to measure effectiveness of your iPhone app

To measure the performance of your iPhone app & for conversion tracking, we can use app analytics tools.